So it's been a week that I've been using my Phoenix and I've learned some stuff. Now however, I'm noticing my 1-way bearing's starting to fail on me. At low speeds, the 1-way works but once I get the diabolo spinning fast enough for grinds and stuff, the bearing seems to hit and miss on the 1-way setup, sometimes acting like a regular yo-yo bearing. Any fixes to this? Is this issue unique to the Phoenix's bearing or have other 1-way bearings had issues? Right now, it looks like I'll be learning how to do it fixed axle (which may not be a bad thing but I bought this for the purpose of a 1-way bearing/fixed axle versatility).

I noticed when I first bought it, the axle seemed to work, then have a couple misses then work. I opened it up and found that the axle had a good amount of lube on it so I wiped it down. Worked fine for about 5 minutes, then another cleaning. After so many times of this, it finally oozed all of it's lube (excess lube?) out and worked like a charm. The other day, I noticed the occasional miss so I figured maybe I'd give it a nice shot of some Liquid Wrench, the same stuff that does wonders to my yo-yo bearings. Now however, there seems to be virtually no grab from the bearing. What can I do to fix this other than using the fixed axle? Are these bearings safe to soak in mineral spirits to clean out the lube and gunk completely or are there plastic components in them (Again, I use this method to clean yo-yo bearings)? How universal are 1-way bearings? As a last ditch effort if my bearing appears to be defective/somehow prematurely breaking, I guess I could contact Duncan or purchase a diabolo bearing that is if they're universal among diabolos.

After doing some wiping down the inside of the bearing by stuffing a paper towel in there to wipe out the excess lube (I'm beginning to think the lube I'm using may be too slick for this, it uses Cerflon for a slick surface) and wiped down the axle several times. I also spun it by hand to work the lube around some. Now, things seem to be working normally for the moment. How long, I don't know but I will update this thread should anything happen.

Doing some further reading, I found out that RC cars also use 1-way bearings and have had slippage due to excess lubricant. So we'll see. What are some maintenance tips for bearing diabolos anyway? Would they probably be the same techniques as maintaining yo-yo bearings, or are they best left untouched?

^Well said...if it isn't broken (anymore) don't fix it. Now that my Diabolo's behaving, I'm leaving it be. I just figured that because yo-yo bearings often need lubrication as well as skateboard bearings, I figured something similar should apply to diabolo bearings.

The difference is that in skateboarding and yo-yoing we have ball bearings. However diabolo's have clutch bearing systems which are little bit different from the ball bearings. Good diabolo bearing has to be fix to the other direction and roll to the other. "Triple bearing" diabolos have two ball bearings next to clutch bearing to smoothen out the friction caused by edges of the axle. The maintenance of those two ball bearings is similar to yo-yoing.

But the clutch bearing system is different and I don't have much experience on it. I would say that when the noise from it becomes massively loud (screeching so that it hurts), consider adding thicker lube to it. But it takes loads of time for the clutch bearing to go in to that condition. Usually doesn't happen before you soak it in water couple of times. At least the lube/grease in Sundia diabolo's is way thicker than yo-yo lube so it takes much longer before it wears out. I've seen couple of cases where the clutch bearing jams. Both times the force has been so massive that it broke the clutch for good and I didn't get it working after that. At least you can always make the diabolo fixed and get a new bearing one.